Cartons for packaging and displaying articles such as candy typically are provided with open cells for receiving and displaying the candy. A clear plastic wrapper is used to cover the opening to the cell in order to retain the candy in the carton. Usually, the cutout portion in the top panel which allows a person to see into the cell terminates short of the ends of the carton so that the top panel portions adjacent the panel ends can be imprinted with graphics.
The cartons are shipped to the packager in the form of flattened or collapsed sleeves which contain the necessary fold lines and cutouts to permit fabrication of the carton. Such blanks are generally provided with an end flap arrangement consisting of dust flaps extending from the side panels of the carton and an end carton flap bonded to the dust flaps. The bonding of the flaps is usually achieved by heating preapplied adhesive to activate it. The resulting carton is satisfactory in performance but is relatively costly to fabricate because of the expensive gluing operation. In addition to the cost of the preapplied glue itself, the energy required to heat the adhesive and the extra time it takes to activate the adhesive and hold the flaps together until bonded add significantly to the cost of fabrication.
It would obviously be advantageous to have a multiple article display carton which provides all the benefits of the currently available cartons but which is more economical to produce.